But I think look nicer with both legs with metal armor and both shoulder pads on

The hip pads are colored in with ingredient. I remember I used to do that when I was still in my first days learning manga/anime LOLFor best results, use base colors only

EDIT: one more thing, the quality is bad! Use JPG and set the quality to highest.

JPG is best for displaying your art, because you can get highest quality and smallest in file size

I wanted Lena's armor to look incomplete to fit in with the corrupted image. JPG's files are good if I take the picture to Wal-Marts Photo Lab and get it develop---it comes out great. The PNG upload actually looks a little better but uploading it to Photobucket seems to distort it some bit..But it looks great on my PSP .

JPG is best for displaying your art, because you can get highest quality and smallest in file size

JPEG? Well, IF you can set it to highest quality, then alright. Some programs allow this, eg, in GIMP you have a slider like this:

Spoiler:

If you have something like that in your program, move it to 100% and you're in good shape. Otherwise, rest assured the quality of your image is going to be reduced.

Spoiler:

The quality still looks bad on your latest image. It's better, but I'm completely lost as to why it would be so distorted. Only other thing I can suggest is, try not using PhotoBucket next time. Maybe that's the culprit.

I'm looking at the face and trying to figure out how it could be better. Only thing I can think of is maybe the nose and mouth could be less prominent to reflect more the anime style (true for girls, anyway; I don't have much experience drawing men ). Maybe also add some definition to the hair. I made this edit in literally under one minute, so nothing major but you get the picture:

Spoiler:

Mind you, some artists are good at combining realism with the anime style; however, they usually use complicated shading to accomplish that (digital painting, I guess) so that requires some advanced skill.

evilReiko wrote:

I think look nicer with both legs with metal armor and both shoulder pads on

I agree. I'd look for another way to make it look corrupt other than missing pieces, looks unbalanced (especially the boots).

Quote :

The hip pads are colored in with ingredient. I remember I used to do that when I was still in my first days learning manga/anime LOLFor best results, use base colors only

Agreed. I used to do the same thing, so I guess we all go through the same stages

Maybe my advice is not all right, since I'm not a good artist myself, but if anyone wants to add to or correct anything I said here go ahead.

Now that I'm done with the negative comments, this is quite an improvement over your previous stuff so keep it up

EDIT: Okay, let me know if those images show up. Not used to embedding stuff from SkyDrive

JPG is best for displaying your art, because you can get highest quality and smallest in file size

JPEG? Well, IF you can set it to highest quality, then alright. Some programs allow this, eg, in GIMP you have a slider like this:

Spoiler:

If you have something like that in your program, move it to 100% and you're in good shape. Otherwise, rest assured the quality of your image is going to be reduced.

Spoiler:

The quality still looks bad on your latest image. It's better, but I'm completely lost as to why it would be so distorted. Only other thing I can suggest is, try not using PhotoBucket next time. Maybe that's the culprit.

I'm looking at the face and trying to figure out how it could be better. Only thing I can think of is maybe the nose and mouth could be less prominent to reflect more the anime style (true for girls, anyway; I don't have much experience drawing men ). Maybe also add some definition to the hair. I made this edit in literally under one minute, so nothing major but you get the picture:

Spoiler:

Mind you, some artists are good at combining realism with the anime style; however, they usually use complicated shading to accomplish that (digital painting, I guess) so that requires some advanced skill.

evilReiko wrote:

I think look nicer with both legs with metal armor and both shoulder pads on

I agree. I'd look for another way to make it look corrupt other than missing pieces, looks unbalanced (especially the boots).

Quote :

The hip pads are colored in with ingredient. I remember I used to do that when I was still in my first days learning manga/anime LOLFor best results, use base colors only

Agreed. I used to do the same thing, so I guess we all go through the same stages

Maybe my advice is not all right, since I'm not a good artist myself, but if anyone wants to add to or correct anything I said here go ahead.

Now that I'm done with the negative comments, this is quite an improvement over your previous stuff so keep it up

EDIT: Okay, let me know if those images show up. Not used to embedding stuff from SkyDrive

I'll go back to the two boots next time I upload another picture of , I was trying out something different. I'll go back to the boots and the one Pauldron thing, IDK I might keep it, armor looks less protective that way. Unfoutunetly there's not much I can do about the face. When I use Photoshop and assimble the character the lines are alright, but when I go over to Paintshop the lines become less solid and I have to use a fill tool to get the lines all solid again---sadly the facual featuers become lost and I have to try my best to fix it . As for uploading---it could be a combination of Photobucket and my computers lack of a decent graphics card. But all in all I'd say it's getting a little better inch by inch.I got the picture developed---I think I used the wrong file (I have two one is in PNG format while the other is JPEG)---it didn't come out right. You can stand a few feet away and it looks alright, but up close...uh---not so well . Now the spoilers that's listed: One and two came in fine the third one not so well.

When I use Photoshop and assimble the character the lines are alright, but when I go over to Paintshop the lines become less solid and I have to use a fill tool to get the lines all solid again---sadly the facual features become lost and I have to try my best to fix it .

Odd situation... why not use Photoshop for the whole thing? Anywho...

Lord Adrian wrote:

As for uploading---it could be a combination of Photobucket and my computers lack of a decent graphics card.

Not likely it has anything to do with the graphics card. I used to draw on Windows 2000 on a computer with a Pentium 2 processor I don't think your graphics card could be worse than that... besides the graphics card doesn't usually affect these types of things so much afaik

When I use Photoshop and assimble the character the lines are alright, but when I go over to Paintshop the lines become less solid and I have to use a fill tool to get the lines all solid again---sadly the facual features become lost and I have to try my best to fix it .

Odd situation... why not use Photoshop for the whole thing? Anywho...

Lord Adrian wrote:

As for uploading---it could be a combination of Photobucket and my computers lack of a decent graphics card.

Not likely it has anything to do with the graphics card. I used to draw on Windows 2000 on a computer with a Pentium 2 processor I don't think your graphics card could be worse than that... besides the graphics card doesn't usually affect these types of things so much afaik

Lord Adrian wrote:

But all in all I'd say it's getting a little better inch by inch.

The colors that I use are in paint shop pro and the Photoshop is the only place I can go to put the characters together, I could probably do it all in Photoshop but all the tools I'm used to using are in PSP 8. Actually the new picture I have hanging up really shows the differance between the old way I did it as to now. I looked at the picture with her in her Xarnning Armor and---it really looks bad. It's all---flat and the new picture has more life in it.

I could probably do it all in Photoshop but all the tools I'm used to using are in PSP 8.

I know. I've been using GIMP until recently for the same reason, but lately I decided to start learning Photoshop and Corel because I was just too limited... most tutorials and stuff on the internet are for Photshop.

Lord Adrian wrote:

Actually the new picture I have hanging up really shows the differance between the old way I did it as to now. I looked at the picture with her in her Xarnning Armor and---it really looks bad. It's all---flat and the new picture has more life in it.

The next time I try to upload a picture I'm going to do something different. Awhile back when I was doing a comic book Starwind, I had a simular problem, the pictures came out all pixilated and distorted so I exported them...they came out a whole lot better.

Ok here's a drawing of Lena I did myself, I'd say it's about 95% all me, I did the face, body (excluding the legs) and her right arm. All I used was the armor, legs, battle skirt (which I still had to put together) and her left arm and it took four hours to do.

And here's Lena using the pre-drawn that I can usally knock down in one or two hours.

Now let's break it down shale we: Doing it all by hand with little aid from pre-drawn cut outs takes WAY too long . If one person takes 4 hours to draw imagine having to do that for everybody....It would take a month or two to put up an episode, not only it would be REALLY exsaulsting causing me to burnout really fast. I like to have fun doing what I'm doing but if it becomes to much of a chore then it losses it's appeal to me.

Now doing it with predrawn characters while doing touch ups on it slashes that time down (even though I still take my time with but that's my choice) and even though it's still hardwork it still fun to do. The point of tools is so they can make it easier to get the job done and I can't do that if I'm spending hours apon hours on one character, that why I have the software to begin with.

Question: What programs and tools do you use to draw and color characters and backgrounds? And what programs do you use to make the animation video?

I use two softwares when drawing. for coloring (weither it's character or backgrounds) it's Paint Shop Pro 8 (it's an old software but it works for what I use it for, and it's simple to use). For character, background and sometimes frame assembling, I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 8----best damn software I ever bought .The Animation program I use is on the same software as my Paint Shop Pro 8. It's the only animation program I've worked with that's not so compilcated to use.Then I put them all together (sound and music) in Windows Movie Maker 8.

As far as drawing backgrounds go---I do that mostly myself exsept for those moons you see. It's actaually a wallpaper I've had for awhile.

You remind me of myself in 2004, I used to draw and color using MSPaint I used to spend 2 weeks on each picture And the result of each picture is.... acceptable! LOL But it consumed alot of time.

Nowadays, I use Adobe Photoshop for static images, and Adobe Flash for animations. I would advice you to use Flash, it can handle everything you need

Flash is not difficult!

30 sec Flash tutorial:

Spoiler:

Don't be shocked by all these panels you see for the first time, most of the time you will use only the Tools panel and the Frames panel, you can close the rest of the panels. I'm sure you will have lots of fun playing around with the application

Tools Panel:

If you use the Brush tool in Flash, the black lines you draw will not look too thick nor pixelated. And coloring is as easy as just a single click of Paint Bucket.

As for the Frames Panel:You will need only to use the Add layer and Delete Layer. And mostly, you will need only 2 layers: 1 layer for background, and 1 layer for each character.

For backgrounds, if you don't want to draw, you can easily drag an image and drop it in Flash